Barack Obama hosted a summit on government surveillance and digital privacy attended by Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Google vice-president Vint Cerf and the boss of US telecoms network AT&T on Thursday.

The US president attended in person, sources told the Politico blog, as did other technology company executives. Additional attendees included representatives of the Center for Democracy and Technology and Gigi Sohn, leader of internet campaign group Public Knowledge.

The meeting was apparently prompted by growing concerns among US technology companies that revelations from the Guardian and others about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, and the companies' obligation to allow access to data under secret court rules, could be damaging their reputation and commercial interests abroad.

The gathering followed a closed-doors meeting earlier this week with Obama's chief of staff Denis McDonough and general counsel Kathy Ruemmler at the White House.

On the agenda at Tuesday's meeting were the surveillance activities of the NSA, commercial privacy issues and the online tracking of consumers.

"This is one of a number of discussions the administration is having with experts and stakeholders in response to the president's directive to have a national dialogue about how to best protect privacy in a digital era, including how to respect privacy while defending our national security," one official told Politico.

McDonough and Ruemmler met members of the Information Technology Industry Council, TechNet and Tech America, which represent a range of companies from defence contractors to digital giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

Campaigners including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy information Center were also present, Politico's Tony Romm reported.

The Guardian's revelations about the breadth of the NSA's access to data, particularly relating to foreign individuals, has created PR problems for US companies. Apple has set its sights on China as a huge potential growth market, but if people there fear eavesdropping by the US government it could harm sales. And Google stands to lose business in cloud computing to European rivals if customers fear similar eavesdropping. Cloud computing companies have estimated they could lose billions of dollars of business as a result.

Chief of Executive. President Obama met by growing concerns of U.S. technology companies that revelations from the Guardian and others about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency and companies allowing access to data under secret court rules. I did not realize that so much information was allowed access to for the NSA. I do not agree with this because people have the right to privacy.

What do Free State Foundation, TechNet, Tech America, the National Grange, the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, Women Involved in Farm Economics, the Urban League and Al Sharpton have in common?

They are all backing AT&T's FCC Petition, which has the goal to close down telecommunications networks and create digital dead zones in about 50 percent of the country. Most disturbing, many of the endorsements of AT&T contradict the needs of their own constituents.

To understand what these commenters are backing, we need some background.

The AT&T Petition is part of the company's strategic "transition" plan to close down the nation's telecommunications networks, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This plan is based on the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) "model" state-based legislation that has been adopted in varying degrees in 23 states. AT&T's Petition is the first step to take ALEC effort to kill the PSTN federally; it will soon be followed up with a bill in Congress.

AT&T claims the Petition is about not regulating phone service using the Internet -- i.e., Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) -- and it's for "Internet Freedom." But this is all a verbal jujitsu as a careful examination reveals that the Petition and surrounding documents are designed to remove basic oversight, getting rid of competition and, more important, ending carrier of last resort requirements. Under such "deregulation," AT&T won't have to offer you service, won't have to fix your phone line if it breaks, won't have to serve rural communities and will significantly impact small business with an ATM machine, an alarm circuit or other wired "data" services.

Moreover, they will 'abandon' whole areas to a 'digital dead zone' -- where the wires don't get upgraded and can't do broadband. AT&T and Verizon have been playing a shell game with consumers. AT&T promotes it much-touted U-Verse fiber network as a next-generation service, but fails to reveal that its network really based on the old, copper wiring in customers' homes; it is a PSTN-based copper-to-the-home service. More troubling, AT&T announced that it was going to stop building out their broadband networks unless this petition goes through. Verizon has simply said it will stop its fiber to the home service, FiOS and abandon most of its wires -- as the majority of customers are still on copper -- which, ironically, should have been upgraded over the last two decades.

In short, AT&T's Petition requests that it starts the 'transition' to the Internet protocols, when in fact it is simply a plan to stop upgrading whole areas of AT&T's 22 states and get rid of all regulations.

AT&T says it has invested more than $225 million in its wireless and wired networks in Ohio in the first half of this year.

The company says the investments included new macro cell sites, small cells and distributed antenna systems deployed across the state as a part of AT&T’s Project Velocity IP.

The three-year investment plan announced last fall will expand and enhance AT&T’s IP broadband networks. The company also expanded and enhanced its 4G LTE network that it says provides ultra-fast mobile Internet speeds. The company said AT&T also has provided new Wi-Fi hot spots.

AT&T says the project has also spurred advanced fiber-optic connections to more than 1,000 additional Ohio businesses. The company says the project also has resulted in U-verse services to more than 31,000 customers.

AT&T Inc. lent support July 29 to Verizon Communications Inc.'s plan to eliminate landline telephone service permanently for a few hundred residents on New York's Fire Island, saying it would make “no sense” for state or federal regulators to try to require Verizon to rebuild the copper infrastructure that was damaged during Hurricane Sandy.

“That would force Verizon to invest in obsolete facilities and equipment, much of which has been or soon will be discontinued by their manufacturers, and for which replacement parts and knowledgeable technicians are increasingly scarce, if not altogether unavailable,” AT&T wrote in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission.

“More importantly, even if those facilities and equipment were readily available, it is unlikely that any provider would have a business case for deploying such facilities in the locations at issue, given their unique geography and demographic conditions,” the company added. “Where, as here, there is no prospect for adequate recovery of investment in network facilities, the [FCC] could not lawfully order a service provider to make such investments.”

Verizon's request to the New York Public Service Commission and FCC has become a flash point in the debate over whether regulators should allow telecommunications providers to permanently stop selling what is known as POTS--Plain Old Telephone Service--and start offering their customers internet protocol-based equivalents or, in some cases, home wireless services.

In Verizon's case, the company wants to offer such a wireless service, Voice Link, to the western end of Fire Island, rather than replace the old copper wires capable of carrying POTS calls.

The public-interest community has cried foul, arguing that Voice Link cannot support broadband internet service, fax machines, some medical devices, or alarm systems. In a recent letter to the New York Public Service Commission, Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, wrote: “It is clear that Verizon is leveraging the storm damage from Sandy as part of its long-term strategy to abandon its copper networks.”

But in AT&T's view, the IP transition is “inevitable, driven by market forces and technological changes.”

Connecticut's New AT&T President Ready For Changing Telecom Scene Hartford Courant And from an AT&T perspective, that's where we're headed, to really be that big broadband provider to folks and providing a whole set of solutions over it.

Apple has won a partial victory in its battle with Samsung over patents. Days after the US President vetoed a patent ruling, the US ITC today said that some Samsung devices infringe two Apple patents but it didn't find any ...

In the first half of 2013 AT&T says it invested more than USD40 million in its wireless and fixed networks in Puerto Rico. The investments included deployment of new macro cell sites and capacity enhancements across the state as part of AT&T’s Project Velocity IP, a three-year investment plan announced last autumn to expand and enhance its IP broadband networks. The company also expanded and enhanced its 4G LTE network.

Highlights of network upgrades completed so far this year in Puerto Rico include a 4G LTE expansion to Vieques and LTE expansions in San Juan, Yabucoa, Ponce, Dorado, Guaynabo and Toa Alta. AT&T’s LTE services are available in areas across the island including the greater San Juan area, Guayama, San German, Cabo Rojo and Yauco.

The 2013 year-to-date network investment follows the USD325 million-plus that AT&T invested in its Puerto Rico wireless and wired networks from 2010 through 2012, according to its press release.

AT&T invests $425M in Florida in first six months of 2013 Orlando Business Journal The investments included deployment of new macro cell sites, small cells and distributed antenna systems throughout Florida, all of which were part of AT&T's Project...

According to a preliminary proxy filing lodged by Leap Wireless with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the San Diego-based wireless operator sought deals or merger agreements with a wide range of potential partners in recent years, but only AT&T Mobility was willing to make a definitive bid for the company – despite initially walking away from a possible deal as early as March 2012.

Despite AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson rebuffing fresh overtures in early-2013, by the middle of the year the prospect of a takeover piqued his interest, and Stephenson made an opening offer of USD9.50 per share of Leap common stock. The parties went on to hold several hours of negotiations, following which Stephenson agreed to increase AT&T’s initial bid to USD15 per share, a jump of 58%.

According to Fierce Wireless, The proxy filing, prepared for Leap’s shareholders, goes to great lengths to detail the dire straits that Leap’s business found itself in prior to agreeing a deal with AT&T. Leap said that its subscriber base declined 22% between 31 March 2012 and 30 June 2013, ‘resulting in Leap’s fixed costs being spread over a smaller customer base’.

Leap said its debt and costs continued to increase, making it difficult for the company to fund its business. Further, the company said that ‘T-Mobile’s planned shutdown of the legacy MetroPCS CDMA network and the scaling back of the manufacture of AWS-compatible CDMA handsets are likely to adversely impact Leap’s ability to procure cost-effective AWS-compatible CDMA devices in the future’.

Starbucks says that it will drop AT&T as a wireless partner in favor of Google, boasting that the change will provide a 10-fold speed boost to the millions of users that use the coffee chain's free Wi-Fi every day.

The companies will partner with Level 3 Communications, a network services vendor, to replace the Wi-Fi hardware in place at Starbucks stores across the country and provide on-premise management of wireless connections. However, a spokesperson for that company declined to provide specifics on how the new setup will speed up Starbucks’ Wi-Fi, and Google would not speak on the record about its plans.

California and Nevada are the next stops on AT&T’s deployment of its pair-bonded VDSL2 Uverse upgrade. The company announced the roll out of 45 Mbps service here in a carefully worded press release, and also held out the eventual prospect of delivering up to 100 Mbps to homes and businesses via copper wires.

It’s part of a plan announced last fall to focus on upgrading “high potential” cities and neighborhoods to maximum speed levels that are on a par with what cable companies claim to provide. Which is why the press release doesn’t actually say that all AT&T Uverse customers, let alone subscribers in legacy DSL service areas, will be able to get the higher speeds. If your street looks like a low potential kind of place, Uverse at any speed or even new DSL service, might not be in your future at all.

If you can get it, it could be a very good deal. Jumping from 12 Mbps to 45 Mbps service costs an extra $25 per month ($51 versus $76) once the $50 promotional rate expires. Assuming it’s actually delivered, that’s enough bandwidth to do pretty much anything most residential or small business customers want to do, including streaming multiple channels of high definition television. Presumably, bandwidth caps still apply, but there’s no indication that AT&T has started enforcing those limits on Uverse subscribers.

The company's LTE service is now available in Stockton, Calif., Topeka, Kan.; Laredo, Texas; and 10 other areas, while expanded coverage hits San Francisco, Milwaukee, and elsewhere. Read this article by Don Reisinger on CNET News.

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